The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has condemned what they tagged as “the treasonable confiscation of the Rivers state governorship election results by soldiers.
The PDP in a press release signed by its Spokesman Kola Ologbondiyan, has therefore demanded that the results be released immediately to avert serious crisis in the state.
The statement read in part, “The PDP completely revile this subversive act by soldiers, who seized and diverted the results to an army barrack in Port Harcourt and calls on all lovers of democracy to unite against this brazen attack on our democracy by the Buhari Presidency and All Progressives Congress, APC.
The party said such barefaced assault was akin to a coup d’état and should not be allowed to stand.
The PDP noted that Nigerians watched in bewilderment as soldiers, in company of APC thugs invaded polling units in Rivers state, unleashed violence on voters, disrupted polling processes and hauled away electoral materials, just because the APC was not in the ballot, following its self-inflicted exclusion from the election.
The party insisted that the use of soldiers to ambush the electoral process and confiscate results is an extreme scheme by the APC and the Buhari Presidency to enmesh the Rivers state governorship election in controversy, seeing that there was no way they can take away victory from the PDP.
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The PDP alerted that soldiers, allegedly under the directive of the Director-General of the Buhari Campaign Organization and Minister of Transportation, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, invaded INEC offices, waylaid INEC officials and forcefully took away collated results to the army barracks, where APC agents have been stationed to alter figures and destroy evidences of PDP’s victory.
The PDP said they want Nigerians to note that the APC was frustrated because it was not on the ballot in the River state election and for that, it resorted to violence, killings and heavy militarization of the area, in the attempt to disrupt the electoral process, seeing that the PDP had already won.
“What the APC and its compromised soldiers failed to note is that the PDP already has valid documents of all the results as delivered from all the polling units where elections held across the state and that the figures are with all the stakeholders.
“Therefore, deploying soldiers to confiscate the results will not change the victory already recorded by our party in Rivers state”.